Kat Ryals first welcomed me into her home with open and glitter littered arms. Shiny scraps of fabric, half-completed art projects, power tools, hot glue guns, and taxidermied animals are the building blocks of this artist’s interior life. I was suddenly at the epicenter of a fever dream decked in gold fringe – I couldn’t be more excited to see more.
Raised in suburban Arkansas and then Cajun Louisiana, Ryals’ artistic practice was shaped by time spent rummaging through thrift stores, daydreaming in ornate Catholic churches, and wandering through forests, swamps, and gardens on her family’s farm. Along the way, she began looking closely at the world and collecting those small things which others might ignore. Small things like the gold trim of a priest’s robes, or baby frogs lost in the bayou, or even discarded playing dice.
Kat takes me downstairs to her studio where she is hard at work creating her Rugs series. These hand-made collages hang upright on her studio wall being held together by pins and hot glue. It’s more delicate than I had imagined, re-affirming the sense that these works of art are ephemeral and representative of a moment in time.
In the past, horror vacui, or the fear of emptiness, was often employed in art and was considered sacred and highly regarded. Today, minimalism represents refinement and luxury while maximalism is unrefined and cheap. Ryals’ Rugs series highlights the casino floor, the detrital glory of belongings lost, and gambling paraphernalia hidden. The selection of collage materials is informed by the classic iconography of Las Vegas, such as spas, pools, steakhouses, buffets, hotel lobbies, casino floors, and wedding chapels. Ryals incorporates poker chips, playing cards, bra straps, peacock feathers and much more into the shape of a seventeenth century Savonnerie French rug pattern. The resulting image is photographed with a high-resolution camera and printed mechanically onto a velvet rug. What many would consider trash, is transformed to create the illusion of luxury. The rugs reference what is, in today’s fast fashion world, considered unattainable, the opulence of a hand-crafted, hand-woven textile wall hanging or rug.
As I’m looking at the collage she has mounted to the wall, Kat turns to ask: Have you seen the movie Showgirls?”
Paul Verhoeven’s iconic film is a widely contested masterpiece of shit, narrating the kitsch of the American dream. When it was released in 1995, the film was considered a flop. It wasn’t until Queer culture adopted the film as bad enough to be good, that the movie crossed over into being a cult classic. Told from the perspective of a wannabe ‘Vegas Showgirl’ – Nomi Malone is looking for fame and rhinestone-studded fortune and she won’t stop until she has it! She and the other dancers are shallow, scandalously thin, and overtly homo-erotic. The dancing is oddly wild, the dialogue is deceptively vapid, and the acting is over-the-top – a perfect storm of terrible turned fabulous.
The film is just one of the many inspirations behind Showroom Dynasty, on view at 5-50 Gallery September 6 – October 19. Curated by Lauren Hirshfield, the show invites viewers to engage with Ryals’ probing exploration of value, desire, materiality, and cultural hierarchy. What has arisen out of American post-capitalism is an aesthetic most notably manifest along the neon streets of Las Vegas. There, as Dave Hickey writes in his work, Air Guitar, is where culture resides – places designed to keep consumers hopelessly spending under the illusion of attaining or becoming something more. Inspired by the gold filigree and ornate environments of a bygone era when luxury was a privilege reserved for a select few, Vegas is a mimicry of opulence. In Norman Klein’s The Vatican to Vegas, she puts into conversation these ideas of Baroque ornate aesthetic and the kitsch of Vegas interiors. Both spaces are environments designed to manipulate perception and create a specific emotional response, whether in grand Baroque palaces or the modern casino floor. Caesar’s Palace, for example, is a refuge for those hard-working Americans who put their lives in the hands of the American Dream in the hopes of one day ‘making it big’. For a meager sum, the same American can live like a king for a day, if only he doesn’t look too closely.
Through sculpture, lens-based work, textile art, and site-specific installations, she emulates material culture and organic artifacts. Often replicating objects that symbolize high status, like large and ornate tapestries or rugs, garments, and houseplants. She directly engages with perceptions of authenticity, taste and hierarchy. Her practice examines how cultural currencies shape personal desire, reinforcing systems of social and environmental disparity.
There is a lot to know about Kat Ryals, a woman raised in Arkansas with Cajun roots, a love for Las Vegas, and now a settled veteran of the art world living in Brooklyn. While talking to Kat about her work, she references a wide range of visual influences, e.g., the palatial interiors of eighteenth-century Europe, the swamps of Louisiana, her own wedding in Las Vegas. The common thread, however, comes from Kat’s early interest in anthropology, and trying to find the locus of hope, desire, and value. Ryals mentions that one of her favorites in her Rugs series is In This World You’re a God, because it juxtaposes Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and the swamp creatures from her days in Acadiana. The frogs featured in this rug’s design, indeed refer to Kat’s time in Acadiana, but also the French delicacy ‘cuisses de grenouilles’ or ‘Frogs Legs’. A food considered for the lower class in the American South, is a delicacy for the French ruling class. Symbols of status and luxury are only ever held in the eye of the beholder.
As I’m reluctantly leaving, Kat hands me stacks of books and smaller print outs for me to fumble through and gain a better understanding of her new series. I vow to re-watch Showgirls in the very near future and tell her all about it. She promises I’ll be able to look after her small Pomeranian dog, Ethel sometime very soon. I can tell that as I’m saying goodbye to her, Kat is already thinking about the composition of the collage downstairs and whether to include those pieces of faux fur or that pink silk…. just as Las Vegas is a place that can only ever play itself, so too Kat Ryals can only ever play herself.
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